Before Looking For New ‘Things’ in Chinuch and Shlichus

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel Archives. A few days ago was the Kinus Hashluchim, and last week, at the end of my program, I mentioned a conversation between Rabbi Mindel and Rabbi Hodakov before the Kinus. This was, I think, Tof Shin Mem Vov or Tof Shin Mem Zayin [?], and as I mentioned, many times they used to discuss — before the Chabad convention, before [unclear] — they used to discuss different things. I have things written down, and maybe in the future I'll share with you. But I mentioned last week something that they spoke, and I didn't finish the conversation, so today I want to finish the conversation between Rabbi Hodakov and Rabbi Mindel.

So I mentioned last week that Rabbi Hodakov mentioned that every shliach, when he gets up in the morning, he says: "Ohel" is a tent — that's temporary. And it says, "Vayikra Yaakov" — Yaakov is called Yaakov, that's the lower level of a Jew. "Mishkan" — that's a dwelling place, that's permanent, and that's "Yisrael" — that's a higher level of a Yid.

So when a shliach gets up every morning, he has to know — you have to have a table, you have to have a Chabad house, he says to Rabbi Mindel, he has to have a telephone — I guess a computer, I don't know if there was a computer then, but I guess that's probably the same idea — computer, everything, all those things, he has to have it, he has to have money. But yet he should know that's not the ikar, that's only tofel, that's only temporary — these are not the most important thing. The most important thing in the Mishkan, the dwelling place, is Yisrael — that's what it states, what's inside of the Chabad house.

That when he gets up in the morning, he always has to think to himself: how many people am I going to put on tefillin today, how many people am I going to send to yeshiva, how many people am I going to make into baalei teshuva or whatever, how many people am I going to learn Torah with — he mentioned Torah today — so this is the ikar. This is what I mentioned.

Then Rabbi Mindel asked Rabbi Hodakov: but okay, every Yid says so — so every day is a day, every year, every year — so every day he has to know this, what he's going to do today [unclear]. Also, especially Anash, that they have a special [teaching] from the Rebbe that they know what their shlichus is. And every one of Anash, he says — that walks out from this room — I'm reading from the notes — is called a shliach; we are all shluchim.

By the way, I want to mention a maamar [unclear: "Hamus girl"] — by the way, it reminds me, I once heard a person asked the Rebbe: why isn't Chabad into kashrus? This was years ago. I mean, not that they're not into kashrus, or [unclear], or Bikur Cholim — you know, the Satmar chassidim, baruch Hashem, they do a lot in Bikur Cholim, they do a lot in kashrus. I mean, the business of kashrus was started years ago — Lubavitch is into it, but not as much as they are; they have [kashrus organizations] because, you know, they go to visit the cholim. So why isn't Lubavitch as much into it as they are? That's what somebody asked the Rebbe.

So the Rebbe answered like this: every Yid has a shlichus in this world. As you said, Satmar gives kosher — we give kosher too. It says in Tanya, the Rebbe says, it purifies the neshama, the nefesh, the guf — it's important to eat kosher, as I've explained the importance of eating kosher food.

Everything else, of course, is very important, but kosher — the Rebbe didn't say this, but I'm saying — there's a sentence, "you are what you eat." If you eat kosher, you become kosher; if you eat a pig, you become a pig — excuse my expression — for a Yid, kosher is very important. And if Satmar wouldn't do it, we would have to do it. Baruch Hashem, they're giving kosher, and the shlichus of Chabad is to make baalei teshuva — this is our avodah in this world, we teach people, this is our avodah. Not that we are not makpid on kashrus, same thing, also the other side — not that they don't have to be careful about other things — but this is their inyan in this world. And that's why Satmar's inyan is to give kosher in this world, and our inyan is to make baalei teshuva.

And as it's explained — talking about a baal teshuva — a tzaddik gamur cannot reach that level. What does that mean? I mean, here you have a person born a tzaddik, a person that grew up from the time he was born until 120 did everything right, did everything [properly] — and here you have a person that was a Shabbos oisvarf his [whole] life, and all of a sudden he becomes a baal teshuva, a real baal teshuva — so you say that he's higher. What does that mean?

So the explanation given — one of the explanations, I guess — is that whatever place, whatever position the baal teshuva was in, was never there for a tzaddik; a tzaddik cannot elevate something that a baal teshuva can elevate. You have to elevate everything in this world — food, you also elevate; you elevate the chicken, you eat the chicken kosher, you elevate the chicken, or whatever you do. So if a person ate treif, or a person was in a position where he's not supposed to be, and now he changes and he becomes a baal teshuva of it, and through that [elevates it] [unclear], because a tzaddik never had to do with this kind of [matter] [unclear].

So anyway, our avodah in this is to bring people closer, and this is our purpose, that the Frierdiker Rebbe, as we spoke, came to America [unclear] to bring [Yiddishkeit] to America. We see today what the Rebbe accomplished — from 1940, when the Rebbe came, until today, we see what Chabad accomplished in this world, how many baalei teshuva we made.

So, to finish the conversation between Rabbi Mindel and Rabbi Hodakov: Rabbi Mindel mentioned to Rabbi Hodakov about some people — he mentioned also someone, over here, they try to look for new ways, put a lot of effort to teach children. [This person] was a teacher, he was a principal, a person of excellence, so his thing is skills — how do we need new skills. Rabbi Hodakov says: we have skills, we have skills from — he said that the Gedolei Yisrael [?] wrote — these are other people, Gedolei Yisrael, they wrote how to give skills to children. That is not something [new] — we don't have to look for new ways how we should teach the children, or what we should do with children.

And he mentioned like this — it says, he wrote it down, I don't know what — it says somewhere in Chassidus, they gave a person the yesod to do the right thing, to listen to the Rebbe. There's so much in Chassidus about skills, about how to teach children, that the children should grow up the way they're supposed to. Why look for new things? We live in a secular world, and we're also trying to find new skills, how we should do it — you don't have to, he says, this is all written. And it's written, we see, we have from sefarim — and not only for yeshivas, even for public schools, even for Wednesday hour released-time programs, we have teacher's guides — and Rabbi Mindel checked that over. So why do we have to now look — he says, some people look for new things — let's not look for new things. What we do have to have is skills, other types of skills, and that's something I will, im yirtzeh Hashem, explain next week — what Rabbi Hodakov mentioned to Rabbi Mindel. Im yirtzeh Hashem, next week I will continue our Thursday night program. Thank you.